Vet­er­an mas­quer­aders Ted Eu­stace and Rox­anne Oma­lo were crowned this year’s Car­ni­val King and Queen, ear­ly Mon­day morn­ing.

Eu­stace and Oma­lo im­proved on their av­er­age per­for­mances in last Thurs­day’s pre­lim­i­nary round to earn their fourth and sec­ond ti­tles at the end of the com­pe­ti­tion at the Di­manche Gras show at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, on Sun­day night.

Eu­stace’s cos­tume, “Lords Of De Sa­van­nah”, eas­i­ly one of the largest in the com­pe­ti­tion, was a feat of en­gi­neer­ing and de­sign as its gi­gan­tic Pier­rot Grenade and dual Mid­night Rob­bers moved ro­bot­i­cal­ly as he crossed the stage.

In a brief in­ter­view af­ter the re­sults were an­nounced, Eu­stace re­fused to re­veal the se­cret be­hind his ti­tling-win­ning por­tray­al de­signed by his broth­er Mar­cus and built by Kevin Robert­son.

“Yes, we used a way to move the cos­tume rather than the tra­di­tion­al way. We try to bring the new tech­nol­o­gy in­to the mas,” Eu­stace said, as he nei­ther con­firmed nor de­nied the use of hy­draulics.

Eu­stace, whose fa­ther Ted­der has three crowns, ad­mit­ted he was sup­port­ed this year by his oth­er old broth­er Cur­tis, who holds the record for the most Car­ni­val King wins with eight, but chose to stay out of the com­pe­ti­tion, this year.

Eu­stace, an air­craft en­gi­neer and a mem­ber of the band Pa­parazzi Car­ni­val, re­vealed that his cos­tume, which was spon­sored by Co­ca Co­la, cost $120,000 and took three months to build.

“I would like to see the mon­ey raised,” Eu­stace said, in a veiled ref­er­ence to the $185,000 top prize.

Oma­lo, who placed sec­ond in last year’s com­pe­ti­tion, im­pressed the judges this year with her pre­sen­ta­tion “Moth­er Of Drag­ons-Keep­er Of Light”, which was de­signed by Var­ma Lakhan, of An­tourage Pro­duc­tions.

“We came back this year to cap­ture back our vic­to­ry from 2018. We ex­e­cut­ed tonight well and we got the crown,” she said.

The Ma­yaro na­tive was quick to point out that she per­formed in the com­pe­ti­tion de­spite suf­fer­ing a bro­ken hand be­fore the pre­lim­i­nary round.

“I got the okay from the doc­tor, so I went out there and shook that cos­tume and brought it to life,” she said.

Oma­lo, who has been a reg­u­lar fix­ture in the tail-end of the com­pe­ti­tion over the past decade, does not plan to de­fend her crown.

“ I am re­tir­ing with a bang. I am leav­ing it for some­body else to try, so they don’t have to study to beat Rox­anne next year,” Oma­lo said.

She claimed that she now plans to en­joy Car­ni­val from the side­lines and pro­duce a Chil­dren’s Car­ni­val band in her home­town.

Ques­tioned about a py­rotech­nic ac­ci­dent in­volv­ing her band­mate Ravi Lakhan, which saw the head of his enor­mous ser­pent-themed cos­tume burst in­to flames dur­ing the Car­ni­val King com­pe­ti­tion, Oma­lo said he es­caped with­out in­juries.

Oma­lo, who suf­fered a sim­i­lar ac­ci­dent last year while parad­ing through Port-of-Spain on Car­ni­val Tues­day, ex­plained that such in­ci­dents were to be ex­pect­ed as the cos­tumes are made of very flam­ma­ble ma­te­ri­als.

“It is hurt­ful that eight months have gone down the drain but in this in­dus­try, you have to ex­pect any­thing be­cause we play­ing with all kinds of dif­fer­ent py­rotech­nics,” she said.

Be­sides the is­sue with Lakhan’s cos­tume, the fi­nal of the com­pe­ti­tion was rel­a­tive­ly in­ci­dent-free com­pared to last Thurs­day’s pre­lim­i­nary round, which was marred by con­stant show­ers that ham­pered the per­for­mance of the mas­quer­aders.

The Car­ni­val King and Queen pre­sent­ed by ac­claimed de­sign­er Pe­ter Min­shall as part of his 2020 pre­sen­ta­tion “Mas Pieta”, were clear crowd favourites as they both drew stand­ing ova­tions from the au­di­ence.

How­ev­er, Minhsall’s mas­quer­aders Earl Thomp­son and Sev­el Nicholls with their the­atric pre­sen­ta­tions “The Pow­er Of Love” and “The Love Of Pow­er”, were un­able to im­press the judges and im­prove on their sec­ond places from the pre­lim­i­nary round. Thomp­son placed eighth, while Nicholls man­aged to main­tain her sec­ond spot.

This year’s Di­manche Gras show, in its sec­ond year in its new for­mat, on­ly man­aged to at­tract a mod­est au­di­ence in the Grand Stand at Car­ni­val City.

Those who at­tend­ed were not left dis­ap­point­ed by the nau­ti­cal-themed show­case, which was pro­duced by Davlin Thomas and high­light­ed tra­di­tion­al King Sailor Mas.

Pa­trons yearn­ing for the Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion, which was moved to Car­ni­val Thurs­day, were treat­ed to a cameo per­for­mance from this year’s win­ner Ter­ri Lyons, as well as re­cent­ly crowned So­ca Monarch Neil “Iw­er” George.

The on­ly Car­ni­val com­pe­ti­tion win­ners not to fea­ture were Chut­ney So­ca Monarch Im­ran “GI” Be­har­ry and Des­per­a­dos Steel Or­ches­tra, which se­cured its 12th Panora­ma Large Bands win, al­most 24 hours be­fore.

Chut­ney so­ca was still well rep­re­sent­ed with per­for­mances from pre­vi­ous mon­archs Neval Chate­lal, KI, and Nishard M.

The show al­so fea­tured per­for­mances from sev­er­al vet­er­an ca­lyp­so­ni­ans and most of this year’s most pop­u­lar so­ca artistes in­clud­ing Machel Mon­tano, Bun­ji Gar­lin, Patrice Roberts, Ben­jai, Skin­ny Ban­ton, Lyrikal, Nailah Black­man, Shal Mar­shall, Blaxx and Ben­jai.